Almost all public universities, private universities, Bangladesh Open University, and colleges under National University, Bangladesh offer different undergraduate and postgraduate business programmes. The question is how many of these educational institutions have the required resources and plan to develop the skills of the students to cope with the emerging market needs. It is quite obvious that to be in line with the market demand, if they update the course curriculum and make other prerequisite changes in a certain frequency, the students who complete their education from those institutions can ensure their proper self-development and contribution to society. However, there is another issue that business schools are not producing a sizeable number of entrepreneurs for the country. Most business graduates want jobs.
It is safer to say that many products and services in the market are sub-standard and do not meet consumer needs. Considering the actual requirement of producing health and environment-friendly products and services and the availability of products and services fabricated in the markets, Bangladesh needs to have entrepreneurs who will ultimately run the industry with strong ethics and will alleviate the gap between our requirement and the existing situation. Then the question arises what percentage of the business graduating students own the new ventures and move forward to leading the different industries with ethics and integrity.
In a recently conducted survey, it was identified that less than 1.0 per cent of business students aspire to be entrepreneurs. Surprisingly almost 99 per cent of the students including the batch-toppers surveyed would like to join the job market. The main causes of their reluctance to be entrepreneurs are lack of funds, uncertainty of income generation, and the negative attitude of most of people towards involvement in entrepreneurship and business compared to joining any job. Most of the students who are graduating from business schools are focusing on being service holders. This is where business schools might have played a key role by giving training, boosting confidence, giving necessary knowledge, and inspiring students.
Are the business schools taking adequate initiatives to make the students ready to join the relevant job industry? Are they doing any comprehensive research and meeting with the employers at a certain frequency to identify the skills required by the industries? Are the teachers updating themselves to guide the students accordingly? To what extent, do the business schools have the preparedness to create entrepreneurs or skilled graduates so that products and services can properly be produced as required by society?
To develop the entrepreneurship-related skills of the students, university authorities can revise their course curriculum and equip them with competent faculties and adequate resources so that they can establish a framework where students can generate business ideas, conduct feasibility studies, connect with other entrepreneurs, and develop business models. Subsequently, the respective trained assessors can assess and select the feasible models.
If we continue to execute this vision then over time the schools can even support the students to manage funds to execute the selected business ideas to produce products and services. The central bank and other government and non-government bodies should also expand their cooperation to implement viable business plans accordingly. Besides, values of entrepreneurial skills and initiatives should be promoted so that students set their priorities to be entrepreneurs at some point in their careers.
Even though Bangladesh needs a lot of them, all students will not be entrepreneurs. So, to make all other business graduates ready to join the job market, school authorities can get regular feedback from both local and global industry insiders as to the skills the students need to have and then the respective schools can update their curriculum accordingly to develop the skills of the students. To enhance the productivity of the students who will join the job industry, Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) can be introduced to the specific business programmes. A collaboration can also be made with a global business school that has implemented the STEM programme. Besides, students should be motivated and guided to join such companies that produce products and services protecting the health and environment and the next generations.
It is of paramount importance that we restructure the business schools to develop both the entrepreneurial and industry-relevant skills of the students. This will make them ready to cope with global business demands and contribute to producing products and services without compromising the business ethics, environment, and needs of future generations.
The writer is currently studying Master’s in Engineering/Industrial Management at Saint Cloud State University, USA.
ppulok79629@gmail.com